The Letter
by JoaquinPhoenixLover
Summary: Jayne receives a letter. Set before Serenity, but post Objects In Space, this is my first Fan Fic. I never realised how hard it'd be! Please review, but don't be too harsh!
1. Chapter 1

**They played around in my head, violated me for their own sick and twisted pleasure, robbed me of my own gorram memories and placed somebody else's in, gave me the crosses of a thousand bad men to bear. What did I do to deserve this? I am no criminal; I committed no offence against the Alliance. All I ever wanted to do was learn. I wanted knowledge, I wanted wisdom, I wanted discernment. I had ambitions to be a great person and who am I now? A gibbering wreck hidden away by criminals on board this ship. I hardly know what I am saying sometimes, words just flow from me the way blood flows from a wound. Things float around in my head - memories, thoughts, pictures and I don't know if they are mine, whether they really happened or are a picture of things to come. This electrical storm is going on in my brain and I can't find the words to explain the way I'm feeling, it comes out all wrong and I get upset. I used to be eloquent, I used to be able to capture the attention of those around me with only a few words. Now the only attention I get is that of my brother, my beloved mei-mei, and it's not the attention I want. He sticks me with a needle whenever I am trying to get the words out of my head, he thinks he's helping me but they're still there, waiting for me until I try to sleep. I haven't slept properly since the night I went to the Academy. I was so excited, so eager to learn and they took it all away from me, every hope and every dream, made me into a monster. I have done things, seen things that no normal girl should've done; they've made me do things with the click of their fingers, a single word. I'm not me when I do them, it's like I am outside of myself watching this ruthless killer. I want to be River Tam again, I want to read and dance, play games and be a brat. Why can't I be that girl again? I feel like I have missed out on my life, like I've just been born and placed into this body without an instruction manual, nobody trained me how to function in society but I guess they never meant for me to mix with society again.**

**This ship, this floating rust bucket, is shown such love by those who live inside of her. I don't know that kind of love, never known what love is. Simon loves me but not in that way. I am his sister, his project, his burden. Knowing what he knows now, would he have come to get me from the Alliance? Would he have destroyed his life, his career, his family to save this gibbering puppet? He could be so much happier without me, though he could never go back to how it was before. They're sending people like me out all the time to find him and I know what'll happen when they find him. Everybody is scared of me - Kaylee, Simon, Inara, Wash, the Shepherd. I think Zoë and the Captain tolerate me not out of their charitable spirit, but their desire to stick it to the Alliance. You're scared of me too, though you try not to show it. You have to be the big brave man, the one who everybody distrusts but have to depend on for their own lives. You act like you're so detached, so unfeeling and unbothered but I know you're different. You truly feel like you belong here, this is your home more so than anywhere you've ever been. Ever since you left your mama's. Why do you act like you hate everyone when you don't? You're as lonely and as isolated as me and you know it, it eats you up inside. You're just a little boy who longs to run home to his mama, to be sat on her knee and cuddled against her breast with reassurances that everything is going to be alright, that there are no bad things in the 'verse and Reavers are just a bogey man story told to you by the older kids as a ghost story. You're lonely aren't you Jayne? Even in room full of people you feel totally alone and that is why we are so alike, the big man and the little girl with nobody to call a friend and only our thoughts, regrets and memories to occupy us in the long nights. We're in space, floating along for thousands of miles with no other person in sight, so really there is no night, no day, just endless time dragging along to tease us, torture us, torment us. Don't let it get to you Jayne, no matter how bad it gets, don't let it turn you into me.**


	2. Chapter 2

**He watched as the captain carried River to the infirmary yelling for the doctor and the doctor running about frantically. He saw all the blood gushing from River, no matter how much pressure they put on her wrists, and felt sick. Gorram it, he'd seen blood before - caused dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of men to bleed uncontrollably. He'd washed other men's blood from his hands after beating them to death when no gun had been available, kept his own blood in by holding on to the wound as tight as he could. What was it about this girls blood that made him feel so ruttin' uneasy?**

**He stared down at the letter in his hand, addressed to him in educated but unsteady script, and knew what it was. He never much cared for the moon brained child but she seemed to have formed an attachment to him. Would follow him out all over the place, just watching, observing, being quiet and to be honest, he kind of appreciated it. It was nice not to be alone.**

**Still staring at the envelope he heard Kaylee running down the catwalk to the infirmary. As she reached the door he put out his arm to stop her going in, and as she saw all the blood, he clung on to her, letting her cry into his huge bicep, pretending it was for her and not for him. He wasn't going to cry but he just needed somebody to hold him, and this was the closest he would get to it.**

**He could hear Simon cursing and crying as he tried everything to save his sister, but they all knew that it was too late - the girl had bled to death all over the ship and there was nothing that anybody could've done to stop it from happening.**

**Mal pulled a fighting Simon away from the chair, covered in his sisters blood, the blood they shared, and watched as the usually cool doctor collapsed into the Captains arms, completely distraught. He could hear Inara behind him sobbing, see Zoë and Wash from the corner of his eye comforting one another, felt the Shepherd push past him to say a prayer for the body. And still Kaylee was burrowed into his bicep, struggling for breath as she cried and cried.**

**The sound of the wailing and the ringing in his own head was enough to send him insane. He could feel the anger boiling up inside of him, the fury of what this girl had done to herself and to those around her, and most importantly, anger towards those who had put her in the position to want to do that.**

As he finally tore his eyes from River's lifeless body, looking even more pale and slight than ever, he realised that he too was crying.


	3. Chapter 3

**They had given Simon a mild sedative to calm him down and he lay asleep across a sofa, his head buried in Kaylee's lap as she stroked his hair. It had taken a lot to knock him out, with Jayne, Wash and Mal all having to hold him down whilst the Shepherd administered the dose. They were all shocked at the strength with which Simon fought them but grief does funny things to people, makes them act as they wouldn't normally.**

**Now they were all sat around the Kitchen table, deathly quiet, nobody saying a word. The Shepherd was reading his Bible but remaining quiet, should he read the scripture aloud, Mal would probably deck him, shepherd or not. Jayne got up and found a bottle of piss poor whiskey, more water than anything else but enough alcohol to numb out certain emotions. Pulling out the cork with his teeth he drank straight from the bottle and offered it to Zoë, who accepted. The bottle was passed around the table with all taking from it, even Book, as though the brown liquid would make everything better. Inara poured a small amount into the cleanest tea cup she could find and offered it to Kaylee and watched as the sweet little face grimaced as the burning liquid went down.**

**Mal stood up and ran his hands through his hair. "I do believe it's time we all retreated to our bunks, try and sleep, though I accept that this may be a might difficult given the circumstances." he said in an authoritative tone, making it more of an order than a suggestion. "Jayne, you go on and carry the doctor to his bunk. I'll start cleaning up."**

**Jayne stood up and started to do as he was told, until the timid voice of the mechanic piped up. "'Scuse me c'ptn but do you think it's wise for Simon to be put in his own bunk? He shared that space with River - when he wakes up and remembers he might flip out again."**

"**She's got a point, Sir" Zoë pitched in. "Don't want another display from him. He might hurt himself this time."**

"**And what do you suggest we do with him, Kaylee?" Mal asked wearily. It had been a long night and he was still soaked in the girl's blood. He just wanted to clean the blood off Serenity and himself and lose himself in sleep for a short while.**

"**Put him in my bunk, I'll sleep in my hammock in the engine room. Be no trouble - I just want him to be OK." She looked down at Simon's unconscious face with such love that it made Jayne's heart ache a little.**

"**Jayne, you heard what she said. Everyone else to your bunks. We'll talk tomorrow about what is to occur. Dong ma?"**

**Doing as the captain said, Jayne took the doctor to Kaylee's bunk and deposited him there. On his way to his bunk, he pulled the letter from his back pocket and braced himself for what was inside.**

**Having read the letter a few times over, Jayne found himself in the infirmary staring at River's lifeless, drained body. He couldn't remember ever feeling this bad about somebody dying. Even his own daddy, who was a mean son of a bitch even when sober, didn't merit this feeling of loss. There was a numb, empty feeling in Jayne's chest that he'd only ever felt once before, when his beloved mother had told him that she was ashamed of him and that he was no longer a son of hers. They'd begun making up, Jayne forwarded credits when he could but every time he thought of that exchange between them, this feeling came to him. It finally dawned on him what it was, this feeling that consumed him and made him feel like shit. It was utter devastation.**

**With River's words swimming around in his head, he knew what he had to do. He had been down to River's bunk and found the lovely pink and white dress that she wore from time to time with the cream crocheted waistcoat. He sewed up her wrists as best he could and took a washcloth to her, erasing the sticky dried on blood from all over her body. He tried to be as gentle as possible as he washed her hair in a basin of warm water, making sure all the blood was out. What was it about River that made him so sad? She was just a kid but he'd seen what the people in this crap heel 'verse did to children. But there was something about this that wasn't right.**

**After dressing her and combing her hair, he laid her out on the stretcher, the one corner of the infirmary not covered in her blood and set to work cleaning up all the equipment. He remembered when his daddy was killed in a bar brawl - he was a total drunk by this point - and how his mama had cleaned him up ready for the funeral. He remembered how she had washed him through her tears, dressed the man who had beat her consistently for nigh on twenty years and how he and his sister Matty had stood and watched, both secretly relived that he was gone and couldn't beat on them anymore. He felt like his mother at that point, grieving over something he'd never had.**

**He left the infirmary, switched out the light and retreated to his bunk, exhausted, with fresh tears welling up in his eyes. And that's when it dawned on him. He loved her - he loved the moon brained child and had never realised it until now, until it was too late.**


End file.
